“He’s calling it a big choice convention — I think he’s got little chance of getting his big choice, and a big obstacle will be ‘rule 40,’” Rove said on Fox News. “The Republican national rule says that you have to have a plurality of delegates from five states in order to get your name placed in nomination.”

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The Republican strategist added, “There are only two candidates who are going to show up in Tampa with plurality of delegates in five states, and one of them is not going to be Newt Gingrich.”

Rove’s remarks come just hours after it was first reported that the former House speaker, struggling to keep afloat in the Republican contest, was cutting back his campaign schedule, laying off about a third of his staffers and replacing his manager – all with the end goal of vying for an opening at the Republican convention in Tampa later this year.

But this opening, Rove predicted, is not one that Gingrich is going to be able to find.

“Speaker Gingrich has a plurality of delegates in two states, South Carolina and Georgia, and little chance, as he admits, of getting any more between now and the convention. And when we go into Tampa, we’re going to have two candidates nominated for the presidency and I find it hard to believe that one of them isn’t going to get 1144 on the first ballot,” he said.

Rove continued, “What’s going to happen? Are we going to have a bunch of people sort of abstaining on the first ballot in order to give Newt Gingrich a chance to win? It doesn’t work that way.”

His only chance is to get the bigotous mormon hating evangelicals who say they follow Christ but yet cast judgement on everyone to follow him instead of Santorum. I mean lets get real here, if Mitt wasn't mormon this would be over already. He has been more fiscally conservative and true to his principles than Santorum and way more than Newt. Even Santorum endorsed him as conservative. It is time for the bigots to stand down and realize that if they keep this thing going we will have four more years of OBAMA!